In addition to recounting the day I took a double limit of prairie chickens while hunting dogless in Nebraska and South Dakota, I'll share "how to" advice on hunting these birds with and without a bird dog. If I can shoot six prairie chickens in one day, while hunting virgin private and public land, without a dog, just think what my experience will do for you and your dog!
In addition to recounting the day I took a double limit of prairie chickens while hunting dogless in Nebraska and South Dakota, I'll share "how to" advice on hunting these birds with and without a bird dog. If I can shoot six prairie chickens in one day, while hunting virgin private and public land, without a dog, just think what my experience will do for you and your dog!
PRAIRIE CHICKEN & PRAIRIE CHICKEN
September 19, 2010
There was only an hour of daylight left when I arrived on the west shore of the Missouri River north of (NoName), South Dakota. After a quick drive from the camping area and a short hill climb, I was beginning to wonder if I would find any prairie chickens in this area. As far as I could see there was nothing but hilly pasture and hay ground. Like pheasants, chickens prefer areas with 30% grain fields mixed with grass. Pasture, wasteland and hay ground are more appealing to sharp-tails than chickens. This was sharp-tailed grouse country and tomorrow morning, I would be a chicken hunter.
This area was my choice from internet scouting on the South Dakota Game & Fish website. I trusted a paper that showed a prairie chicken booming ground near here, but if I had checked aerial photos or satellite imagery, I never would have targeted this area. Huntable numbers of chickens are found within a few miles of grain, making this area a waste of time. I don’t scout on Internet Forums. It’s bad manners and takes the discovery out of finding your own places to hunt.
Prairie chickens are birds of eastern grasslands. Most biologists believe that even the extinct eastern shore, Heath Hen was in fact, a greater prairie chicken. Sustainable populations of prairie chickens require grain for over-winter survival and at one time migrated great distances. That’s why sharp-tails and prairie chickens have dark meat. Something to do with excess blood in their muscles for prolonged flight. Chickens’ grain preference seems to be in the order of soy beans, milo then corn. Unlike sharp-tails, prairie chickens are not products of dry land wheat environments. Generally the further north and west you travel the fewer chickens you will encounter. In my experience there are few chickens west of Valentine, Nebraska, a few pockets just west and south of Pierre, South Dakota, most notably the Pierre National Grasslands and their numbers gradually dwindle as you approach North Dakota in North central and eastern South Dakota.
When I stopped in Gregory, South Dakota to purchase my non-resident hunting license, a friendly sort suggested that I contact a rancher north of town for access to hunt chickens. He didn’t know that he would allow me to hunt without paying a fee, but that I should at least stop in and say Hi. He said the rancher had good numbers of chickens in the past. I’m a self-reliant sort to a fault, and was content to go my own way and head for the river breaks. At least till I climbed this hill and had a look around.
There was another Walk-in area a few miles to the east that I could get to before dark if I hustled. Maybe there would be some grain there. Just a couple of miles down the road, I saw a rancher putting up silage and I stopped for a chat. He was helpful and very enthusiastic about the grouse numbers. He said his son owned the hills that I had just left and they were full of grouse but as I expected there were few chickens. He then explained that he owned the eastern Walk-in ground I was headed to and I wouldn’t find any chickens there either. He suggested that I head northwest for chickens.
I decided to spend the night at the campground and walk his son’s ground in the morning, expecting to pack up by about 10:00 a.m.
I woke in the morning in a primitive camping area just above the river. I lay there watching the skies lighten and listened to the night time sounds change from owls and coyotes to cattle bawling and birds warbling. There were fisherman below me who had also slept over and were still groggy from their night time fall festival of lies. Breaking camp is a quick exercise when it only consists of a cot and sleeping bag.
It was opening mourning of the South Dakota prairie grouse season and I fully expected to have seen pickups loaded with dogs and to have heard gun shots by now. But there were no trucks, dogs or shots. Seemed strange.
I had spent the past four days hunting chickens, turkey and doves in Northern Nebraska, and had had a great trip so far. This was to be my first attempt at a double limit of prairie chickens, three in South Dakota and three in Nebraska in the same day and it already seemed that it wouldn’t happen today, at least not here.
I walked big hills as in big high and big around. Not like the ridges in the Sandhills of Nebraska. Just small clusters of hills that seemed 300 feet high and a half mile apart. It took a while to get into birds. I started out in some shorter hills in the hopes that the birds might come easy. No such luck. It seems the only birds that come easy are pheasants in the ditch. I then crossed the road to a larger Walk-in that by the map extended about three miles into the….well, distance. It was miles and miles to the next intersecting road. This was not the kind of cover that you simply drive around to the back side to check out.
I did get into grouse. First I heard one clucking and watched it settle among some cattle across a wide draw and half way to the top. I kept trudging to the top of the highest hill I could find. As I carried into chukar partridge hunting in Nevada and Oregon, start out high and if you don’t get into birds gradually hunt parallel and lower until you do.
There was a light breeze out of the east and as expected my first covey flushed wild from a west facing slope. As in prairie grouse almost always flush wild. Also as expected, they were grouse. Cuk, cuk, cuking grouse. You can sometimes flush dozens of birds without so much as flexing your shooting arm. To the point that you never expect any to get up in range…. and then they do.
There were good numbers of grouse in the hills as the rancher had predicted, and also as predicted, they seemed to all be grouse. There were also whitetails, muleys, ducks, geese, pheasants, even a covey of quail. But no chickens. I don’t waste much time in an area that doesn’t feel right and although the grouse numbers appeared to be excellent, and I’d like to return some other day, this was not a chicken limit area. I decided to drive northwest until I found grain fields.
Nebraska Prairie Grouse, Biologist Bill, cautioned that sorting chickens from grouse in mid-September would be difficult because both species were molting. But after years of sorting chickens from grouse in several other dual limits I was confident that I wouldn’t make a mistake. Most importantly you have to accept that you will pass on some shots. The problem in taking multi-state dual limits was even one mistake could ruin the whole day and possibly the entire trip and season. In most cases the trip would be cut short before I got the job done, due to a pending possession limit. As was the case this trip for Nebraska. I already had nine birds on ice. I couldn’t end up with only one or two more birds in Nebraska or I wouldn’t have room left on my license for a three bird limit.
When I topped out on the plateau above the river and checked the road map, I realized that I was only a few miles from the rancher that was suggested to me the day before. I found him at the house doing chores with two of his adult sons. They were all friendly and offered that their father should ride along with me to show me their ground and suggest where I might find birds. You gotta love guys like that. Dad said they never charged a fee, even for pheasant hunting, but they were particular about who they let on. Hunters with kids came first. They thought it was important to have more young hunters. The only thing that they asked was for you to stop back at the house to say thank you and let them know how you did.
The rancher rode with me for nearly an hour showing me several pastures and hay ground that I was welcome to hunt, as we talked of the economy, politics and hunting. He offered that his opinion on bird hunting was that anyone can shoot pheasants, but prairie grouse were much tougher. He said he respected a guy who would walk the hills for grouse.
He also cautioned me about trying to shoot a limit of just chickens. He said he had mostly grouse, with just a few chickens. And would be surprised if I got even one.
I dropped him off at the house in time for lunch and drove to a tall hay field and had a Mountain Dew and peanut butter sandwich. I noticed the clock said 12:10 as I left my truck.
I was back at my truck at 12:40 with a three-bird limit of prairie chickens. I walked into one group of about 10 chickens just where I expected them to be. They were in the far corner of the field just over a light rise out of the wind. They stagger flushed all around me and I have to admit, I was a little flustered. I immediately recognized that they were chickens and shot the first bird that offered me a reasonably distant shot. Then I shot twice at birds flying to my hard left and didn’t touch a feather.
Fortunately, I had left my over/under in the truck and carried my old Weatherby Patrician pump. I bought this gun new in1974 and I had shot more than a 1,000 birds with it. At one time, when I shot more recreationally, we were a deadly pair. With the first three shells today, not so much. I left the cylinder bore barrel on it and was shooting handicap AA’s. Thankfully, I settled down and dropped a pair flying to my right with the remaining two shells.
This was the first time grouse hunting, that I took a three bird limit from one flock. It might not have been as pretty as a three shot, three bird limit, but I had three dead birds on the ground that I didn’t need a dog to find.
There were few doves in the area and as late as it was, coupled with the fact that I traveled further north than anticipated, I didn’t think I had time to drive back to Nebraska and still take three more chickens, that afternoon. It would be 4:00 p.m. by the time I reached my hunting ground and it was the second Saturday of Nebraska’s prairie grouse season. It was likely that someone else had already hunted the CRP Map ground I was relying on for my limit.
I thanked his sons on the road and stopped at the house to thank dad. I took the chickens to the door on a leather strap as I was sure he would like to see them. He was shocked and said so, “How in the world did you do that? I’ve never had a grouse hunter limit out so fast and they’re all chickens!” He welcomed me to return anytime and I graciously thanked him again.
I decided to make haste for Nebraska and hope for the best. If I didn’t get my three birds I would have to cook and eat whatever I did shoot, camp overnight, hunt Nebraska again in the mourning and hopefully head back to South Dakota on Sunday.
I made it to my chicken ground at 4:00 p.m. and thankfully there was no one hunting it. I stuffed five shells into my Weatherby and another handful in my pocket. I just love the heavy metal “Clunk” of a shotgun action closing on a live round. They never get that right in the movies.
If no one had been in this field today, I should be able to shoot three chickens here. I rested this field every other day and had shot two limits here. It had been three days since I last hunted it and I had always flushed around 30 chickens in the back half.
I thoroughly quartered through the field realizing that I wouldn’t have time to re-walk any of it, if I didn’t get my birds on the first pass. I had to make sure that I flushed every chicken in here the first time through. If I didn’t have three chickens by the time I got back, I would have to cross the road and hunt a small range of hills that I hadn’t worked yet. I had no idea if I could find a chicken in there or not.
The further I grew from my truck the more I questioned not carrying more shells. By the time I reached the half way point I was beginning to think someone had been in my field. Both other hunts I had already been into chickens by now. The first day I had two and the second I was limited out at this point, but today I hadn’t flushed a bird.
Then up went a single, rocking gently side to side. Definitely a chicken and an easy quartering away shot. But somehow, I had gotten sloppy. I was carrying my gun over my shoulder which I hardly ever do and I was clumsy getting it down. After many years of just shooting the over/under I had had no trouble with the safety or pumping my old gun for the past couple of days. But suddenly, I found myself looking at the safety to make sure it was off and my cheek wasn’t on the stock when I pulled the trigger.
I still managed to hit the bird lightly but missed completely with the second. He was too far out for a cylinder bore on the third, but I clipped him again and he faltered in the stiff wind, and then cart-wheeled down, broken wing style. The wind carried that bird three-hundred yards behind me. What a mess. I needed to find this bird, After a half hour of hunting and shooting three shells, I really needed to find this bird!
I already had two other birds this trip continue flying after being hit and suddenly die. On the first day of my trip I had taken a long shot on the last chicken for my limit. I hit the bird, but not hard enough. I was willing it to die and just before it crested a hill 400 yards away, it folded and crashed to the ground in a puff of wind blown feathers. I found it stone dead in the mowed hay.
The second was a sharptail. Several grouse flushed from a plum thicket and I shot at just the one. I saw that it was hit and it only flew about 75 yards to some thick grass on the side of a hill. When I got to about 50 yards, it re-flushed but before I could get on it, it too died in mid-air. In nearly 30 years of prairie grouse hunting, I had never had one fall from the sky and I now had two in two days.
Unlike the previous two, I knew this bird was not dead. I wasted three shells weighing this bird down and if this was any indication of my shooting, I didn’t have enough shells. I’ve had this happen before. Start the day shooting fairly well, then change states or areas and suddenly my shooting was off. Sometimes, like today, way off. I should have loaded up at the truck with a lot more shells.
There should have been feathers where the bird fell. From that altitude, even being only injured, there should have been feathers but I couldn’t find any. I could usually just find one feather than trace it back into the wind and find the bird. Grouse aren’t notorious runners when they’re crippled. They usually just sit there and wait to be found, but not this chicken.
As I started tracing concentric circles where I thought it fell, I was startled by a hen pheasant flushing at my feet. After a few minutes, I reverted to weaving random patterns and pushing the taller grass aside with my gun barrel and shuffling my feet through the thicker stuff. I circled and wove to no avail. I knew the bird hadn’t fallen dead and was skeptical about finding it from the outset. A 300 yard mark in rolling topography can easily lead you to the wrong hill or wrinkle and you could be searching 25 or 30 yards from where the bird actually fell.
In most cases crippled prairie grouse react the same as ruffed grouse. If they still have any life left in them, instead of trying to run, they just beat their wings hard, making them easy to find. There was nothing easy about this guy. I have a 20 minute rule when searching for cripples. If I can’t find a cripple in 20 minutes, I surrender. After all, even with a great dog, you will not find every bird you knock down if you shoot dozens to hundreds of birds a season. We all know someone who says his dog never loses a bird and I’m sure that guy never loses money in Vegas either. I surrendered the bird to the predator gods.
There is only one final retrieval effort that has worked for me. I sometimes return to the same area I lost the bird in a half hour to a day later and find the cripple out walking around. But this only works in open ground and this was waist high CRP in a wet year.
Unlike some purists, I seldom count a lost cripple against my limit. My decision depends on the species and the hunting pressure. A person needs some understanding of the purpose of bag and possession limits to make that decision. In the case of dual limits, it’s easy. You can’t count what you don’t have in the bag. To do so is to lie.
It was difficult to return to hunting after this loss. I was determined that if I didn’t get my three birds, I would return with a flashlight if I had to.
Back to where I flushed the lost bird, I covered about another 200 yards and flushed another single that flushed very close. He flew low and straight away. I knew when I shot I was going to hit him hard, but I shot anyway. Lost birds do that to me. I’m normally conscientious about over-killing a bird. It’s a disrespectful thing to do. But on these dual limits, I can’t afford cripples. Not the wasted time searching, the anxiety if I do, and the guilt if I don’t, find the bird. A guy has to concentrate on locating the birds, putting them up in range, shooting and retrieving them. And nothing messes with that process more than crippled birds. Especially lost cripples. First you question your abilities, “was my head too high? Was he closer or further than I thought?”. Then the time away from finishing your limit. In dual limits, cripples are a very bad thing.
A word on over-killing a bird. First of all, it’s a wasteful thing to do. Secondly, it’s impossible to use the bird in a decent photo. Now, a word on photos, I have been very surprised by the reaction of women in an office environment, to my hunting photos. I always attempt to screen blood and broken wings in any photos I take, but while working with many women in Minneapolis and Iowa I have been surprised by how may ask, .”Where did you shoot it? There’s no blood”. Hardly the reaction that the media leads you to expect. When I would explain that I screened it from view, they thought that was silly.
In my mid-western experience, the public is not nearly as sensitive about hunting being blood sport as we’ve been led to believe. There was a woman who worked in the police department who admitted to stopping in my office just to look at my hunting photos. She commented that she was against hunting, but thought my photos were quite nice and I should enter them in a contest. So if properly presented, non-hunting and even some anti-hunting people will find your hunting photos pleasing.
There was less than two hours of shooting time remaining and I had only one Nebraska chicken. I repeatedly reminded myself that I only needed to flush a pair of chickens. Just two birds was all it might take. Don’t miss, don’t cripple and kill a pair. You see, that’s the thing about dual limits. If you don’t get all your birds, the first limit is wasted. You must start over from scratch the next hunt. From a dual limit standpoint, I would rather not shoot a bird at all than to come up one short. Fortunately from a recreational standpoint, I enjoy every bird that I shoot. You would be surprised at the hundreds if not thousands of birds I can recall shooting and you can bet that I can recall hundreds that I missed as well.
As it turned out, other than the lost cripple this was a golden day. I hunted virgin ground in South Dakota and was fortunate to take a three bird limit of chickens on my first attempt. In Nebraska, I walked into the largest covey of chickens in my entire trip, just when I needed them most. I topped a small rise at the back fence line of the section and there they were. Singles and pairs stagger and fan flushing to the front, sides and even behind me!
I concentrated on a straight away and was riding it out as most of the birds were flushing very close. When my target bird reached about 20 yards another pair flushed at my feet and flew in front of my barrel. I switched to the pair and when they made 20 yards, I shot the left bird hard, swung on the right, hit it mostly on the left side and immediately shot it again. That’s something I’m improving on. I’ve always hated messing up a breast with too many shot and feathers but I’m learning it beats the alternative. There would be no more cripple searching today.
This reminds me of a ruffed grouse hunt in Northeast Iowa many years ago. I posted on a the side of a long ravine where I could shoot to both sides, while a friend took his turn walking around the point. It was his responsibility to take any birds that skirted the outside edge of the ravine and mine to take any that flew the gauntlet down the ravine. A ‘ruff flushed up top and I could hear it gaining momentum as it sped towards me. It was nearly straight overhead when I shot, a typical Station 8 skeet angle. I had learned to lead these close birds a little long with the intent of hitting them in the head and neck. It was much more conducive to preserving edible portions of meat if I connected and left few cripples as I generally missed by over leading them. Well, bird parts rained down on me at the shot, but the grouse kept going! My friend was yelling at me to shoot again, but I was dumfounded. I had never seen so much stuff fall off a bird and had it keep flying. My friend caught up with me and started lecturing me about wasting time searching for a cripple when we could keep hunting if I had just shot it again. Most of you will not believe what we did find of the grouse. It was missing one foot, the other entire leg and drumstick, one wing and it’s tail were all gone. Another shot proved unnecessary as the bird was dead.
When I picked up my last two chickens I looked them over carefully. Yes, they were both yellow-legged, square tailed prairie chickens! I even pulled the first Nebraska bird out of my coat and re-checked it. All chickens.
This had truly been one of my most memorable hunting trips. I took two new dual limits in four days. Logically, neither of these dual limits should have been any easier or more difficult than many of the others I had taken. You just never know. I had probably shot more than a hundred limits of ruffed grouse over the years making a dual limit of ruffed grouse and a fall turkey a gimme. Even a double limit of ruffed grouse was easy enough that I had done it several times, so a combination limit of ruffed grouse and pheasants in my home state of Iowa, should have been one of the easiest of all. But it was never to be. Only once did I ever come close, but I was distracted by a partial albino pheasant and never got my third pheasant. Minnesota yes, I took five ruffed grouse and two pheasants in Minnesota the first day I attempted it, but never three and three in Iowa. And ruffed grouse and woodcock were a real nemesis. Only once have I ever taken a combination of ’ruffs and woodcock and it was in Minnesota many years ago, five of each.
But to take a double limit of 6 prairie chickens the first day I attempted it, following a limit of prairie chickens and a fall turkey just two days earlier, was very special.
I think I’m going to buy myself a trophy!